


the buttercup effect

by ishka



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fluff and Humor, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 10:27:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16679887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishka/pseuds/ishka
Summary: The vocabulary bank of an African grey parrot can exceed one-thousand words. That’s not terribly impressive by most human standards, but in the bird world, it’s a big deal.With great power comes great responsibility and censorship laws. One particular African grey— in fact, the bird currently perched and bobbing on his travelling wooden stand in the center of the Oha! 4 NEWS LIVE recording studio— has never heard that phrase, and even if he had, he would not have understood it also applies to birds named Buttercup with large vocabulary banks (eight-hundred and thirty-two words and climbing, thank you) on live television.





	the buttercup effect

**Author's Note:**

> for the makoto birthday exchange, [starstruckscribbles](https://starstruckscribbles.tumblr.com/) asked for soumako and fluff! a humble checklist.
> 
> a special thank you to [bricker](https://twitter.com/brickerbeet) and [teresa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybeillride), who handle my writing woes as if i am paying them to.

The vocabulary bank of an African grey parrot can exceed one-thousand words. That’s not terribly impressive by most human standards, but in the bird world, it’s a big deal.

With great power comes great responsibility and censorship laws. One particular African grey— in fact, the bird currently perched and bobbing on his travelling wooden stand in the center of the Oha! 4 NEWS LIVE recording studio— has never heard that phrase, and even if he had, he would not have understood it also applies to birds named Buttercup with large vocabulary banks (eight-hundred and thirty-two words and climbing, thank you) on live television.

Therefore, when network entertainment segment lead Uchida Atsuko asks Buttercup (via his affable handler) what his favorite word is, Buttercup is honest, and because Buttercup has been conditioned through positive reinforcement to answer questions, Buttercup says—

“Waitwaitwait!” Rin yells over what had been a still and quiet room at the same time as he throws himself forward in his violet (crushed, velvet, vintage) armchair for the remote on the coffee table. “Hold on!”

Broken of his mindless scrolling reverie, Sousuke lowers his phone and rolls his head along the back of the sofa to find out what he is waiting for, uncommitted to the full body twist until he can confirm Rin didn’t just startle himself out of a nap. “Why are you yelling?”

“The bird said fuck,” Rin says, and slams the pause button on the broadcast. He faces Sousuke. “Did you hear it?”

“No,” Sousuke answers, offended. “I hate this guy, I never listen when you put it on.” He takes a moment to consider if he cares whether or not a bird said fuck on TV, and decides by the way the broadcast is paused on that smarmy, grating Uchida who never shuts up gaping on like a dead trout, he at least needs context. “But go back.”

“Thought so.” Rin rewinds the broadcast back two minutes, catching the tail end of an advertisement for a sour lemon soda Sousuke absolutely needs to try, and lets it re-run:

 _“Before the break,”_ Uchida says in a novelty suit bestriped of tiger print, _“We heard Buttercup here count to twenty! Mr. Tachibana, what else can he do?”_

Color Sousuke surprised; he expects a big-eyed, short-statured knobby individual donned in oversized safari get up, the type one might associate with bird husbandry and underdeveloped social skills. Instead he lays eyes on a plain guy his age who looks just the normal amount of sleep deprived and vaguely uncomfortable in the existential sense, as all people drowning somewhere in their twenties perpetually are.

Rin pauses it again. “Hey, where we at in the post-post-break-up depression cycle with you? Has it been a year yet? Can I point out attractive people for you again without the melodrama?”

Sousuke juts his jaw to the side in thought of it, counting up the months in his head. Too soon and Rin gets Sousuke’s signature _love is dead and I’d prefer to die alone_ speech. Today he feels nothing but the sweet embrace of complacency. “I think we’re clear. Go for it.”

“Good. Hey, Sousuke, that guy is attractive.”

He looks between Rin and the screen. Rin’s not wrong, but Rin’s impressions are also notoriously superficial. Rin sees bright eyes and soft smiles and worries about the rest after he hits on it. Sousuke’s more concerned with long-term consequences, like the fact this guy probably counts a parrot among his closest friends. To the credit of his commendable genetics, he’s sandy and golden head to toe, he radiates a placid easiness which neutralizes the outlandish tacky shine of his tucked forest green polyester polo and the broad, stiff hips of his unfortunate khakis. So yes, handsome is the socially acceptable term. But parrots live for like, probably, two hundred years, and Sousuke just doesn’t have that kind of patience for anyone.

“That guy? I mean, he’s fine, sure, but c’mon Rin. People all obsessed with animals are weird. He has a parrot. He’s weird.”

“Are you allowed to have impossible standards like this in your position?” He rolls his eyes and taps the remote to un-pause. “Also, it’s the zoo’s parrot, you damn idiot, not his.”

Before Sousuke can defend himself, the show goes on, which is fine because he has no defense.

 _“Well, he knows his shapes, he knows his alphabets,”_ Mr. Tachibana explains unevenly, as he fidgets and gestures in a series of aborted half-movements, “ _He understands cause and effect to a certain degree. He can ask questions. He reasons all right.”_

_“Reasons?”_

_“Right. He can make informed choices, he has subjective preferences, he can assemble and apply multiple sensory inputs into one idea or… Um, anyway. He’s really quite the star back at the zoo, actually. He’s a better conversationalist than most first dates… well. That’s uh, what I’ve been told.”_

“He’s projecting. His dates fucking suck. So you’re just his type,” Rin teases.

“Rin. Don’t.”

“No, Rin _do_. We’re gonna go meet him, you know that now, right?”

“No, we’re not,” Sousuke mutters. “Give it a rest.”

Uchida lays a hand over his midsection and leans back into a forced rat-a-tat _hata-ta-ta!_. Buttercup shrieks and whistles the sound of a falling bomb and shuffles closer to his handler, whose smile has dried out into a hard plaster in danger of crumbling to the slightest provocation, which conveniently enough, will be soon. _“Does he pay for the meal, too? Ha-ta-ta!”_

 _“I’m afraid not, but he could count out the coins,”_ Mr. Tachibana answers. The conversation

falters, and the man chews his lip while he tries to remember what else he was supposed to say. His nervousness is, unfortunately, endearing. “ _Oh! Right. He also has a knack for, um, fortune telling.”_

_“Isn’t that mysterious!”_

Ever the killjoy, Sousuke scoffs. “Bullshit. This is—”

Rin, an avid reader of horoscopes: “Shut up, I want to hear it.”

 _“Right!”_ Mr. Tachibana declines his head towards the bird. _“How’s my weekend looking, Buttercup?”_

Buttercup wobbles, whistles, thinks about it. _“Danger! You should watch out.”_

Uchida mock-gasps and Mr. Tachibana attempts to give the bird a treat from his bottomless chasm of a khaki pocket, albeit with reluctance, as if the warning rattles him. Maybe Sousuke’s wishing for too much, but through all his twitchiness and his nervousness, Sousuke doesn’t get the impression Mr. Tachibana is especially ornithologically-inclined at all. When Buttercup snatches the treat from his handler’s open palm, he all but snaps it back to himself. Frightened?

 _“Thank you. Watch out!”_ Buttercup repeats. _“Outlook not so good. Watch out!”_

 _“For what?”_ Uchida laughs.

Buttercup bows. _“You’re gonna die.”_

 _“Bu—”_ Mr. Tachibana moves to respond, only to be interrupted by Uchida. Irritation ticks at the corner of his mouth, Sousuke notices. Sousuke is vindicated knowing someone else on this planet finds this man as insufferable as he does.

_“Let’s talk about something else! What does Buttercup like to talk about?”_

_“Showbiz, baby,”_ Buttercup answers, in a low mimic of an unknown influencer. _“Superstar!”_

This briefly eases Mr. Tachibana into an inaudible chuckle and wins the bird an affectionate one-knuckle nudge. If Sousuke liked birds that were smarter than him, it would be cute. _“He does love attention.”_

“This is it,” Rin says, like this is the fever pitch of his year, like nothing else will surpass this single, anticipatory moment. Sousuke’s busier trying to make out the logo on the uniform. A zoo, the local one? Nearby? Far away? Why’s he looking? Curiosity is inconvenient.

_“And what is Buttercup’s favorite word?”_

Simultaneously: a plaster smile beneath a set of wide and terrorized eyes shatters into a million pieces all individually screaming _no! no! we talked about not asking this question!_ , an African grey parrot elongates with pride, a shrill yet perfectly articulated answer rings out across the studio.

_“FUCK!”_

Rin regresses a full seventeen mental years to point and laugh, Mr. Tachibana dips forward to meet his fingertips to his forehead in defeat, Uchida gapes into the void of the camera, and Buttercup bobs back and forth and chirps _fuck, fuck, fuck_ —

The rebound is swift. Beet-red and no longer deluded into thinking he can hide it, Mr. Tachibana snaps up to shout and smother the increasingly hefty profanity fine to his right: _“Anyway! Buttercup will be out and ready to tell you your fortune this weekend—”_

_“Fuck, danger! Watch out!”_

_“—at Tottori Regional Zoo and Aquarium! Come say—”_

The feed cuts to the weather, a mercy kill.

Rin leans back into his chair and ratchets down his hysteria, wiping at the corners of his eyes while the last of his amusement hiccups through a long sigh. “Oh man. That guy— holy shit. We’re going. We’re gonna go see that bird— I’m gonna see the bird. You go see that guy.”

Sousuke leans over, grabs the remote from Rin, and turns the TV off. “Uh, No.”

“Yes,” Rin argues. “I have to meet him.”

“Then you go. I don’t need to spend money to know I’m going to have a bad weekend.”

“Sousuke.”

He falls back into the couch, phone in hand and patience threshold for all this badgering suddenly pressed to max. “No.”

“Sousuke he seems nice, c’mon. You have to talk to people other than me. They’re out there!”

“You’re being obnoxious.”

“You know what? Maybe. But you’re being boring and that’s worse.” Sousuke glowers in response, a warning Rin does not heed. “What’s the worst that could happen? You talk to someone new and end up too boring for someone who has set their expectation bar beneath a bird?”

Sousuke sits up from his slouch, irritation knotting heartburn in his chest. “I am not boring, asshole.”

“Then get off your ass,” Rin goads, “and prove it.”

* * *

 

Sousuke thinks it’s stupid. A waste of time and money, to quote.

Begrudgingly, it’s why he agrees to go.

He lied. He is too boring. One too many years of passive participation in his own life have threatened to encase him in a bout of early onset what-the-fuck-evers, self-inflicted. It’s a chronic illness where he stays home every night and weekend because, barring Rin, he has allowed his relationships to lapse over time in favor of a routine. A quiet meal alone with his thoughts or a show to binge here and there. A gym membership with a progressive lifting plan to nowhere. A job in a cubicle he forgets about as soon as he leaves it. A compliance specialist, if you can believe it, for the irony of the universe possesses no upper bound.

His solitude is a cage he’s been constructing for himself built of bricks of dogged notions of individualism, mortared with denial. This, all the while Rin, a self-described yes-man, stumbles into three-day outdoor rock-climbing adventures and scores free tickets to fashion shows in Tokyo with the sort of people who go by aliases such as Nocturna and Blade. Rin used to invite Sousuke, until Sousuke said no too many times. Until Sousuke was burnt out on looking all over the world for someone that wouldn’t mind a night in every once in a while. If that’s boring, so be it.

In truth, boring isn’t so bad. The bachelor life with Rin is stable, easy going, and reliable. Rin forgets that he will be boring one day too, and maybe come to appreciate it more. For now though, Sousuke can and should compromise. Being boring shouldn’t be synonymous with being a total reclusive shut-in, not until retirement anyway.

They arrive too early, and the morning is packed full of pitifully small enclosures of pacing lions and sleeping tigers and no bears. Hostile swans chasing down oblivious patrons provides the bulk of the entertainment.

Nearer the awaited hour, Sousuke stops and slips the trifold map from his back pocket and double checks their route. “Okay. He’s supposed to be outside the aviary in five minutes.”

“The guy?” Rin prods, eyebrow high.

“The bird!” Sousuke snaps.

Rin sighs and falls back to catch himself by his elbows on the nearest guardrail, next to the vulture enclosure. The vulture, hopeful for the briefest of moments as Rin collapses, is quickly let down when Rin is still alive. “Honestly? I’m underwhelmed.”

Sousuke narrows his eyes over the top of the map. “You have been to the Sahara. You have ridden actual elephants. A cheetah chased you up a tree. What were you expecting here that could possibly have been able to top those experiences for you?”

“Hmm... good point.” He pushes off, and they resume the path. “Hey, I’m sorry I called you boring. Well, I meant it, but not in a mean way.”

“Nah,” Sousuke sighs. “I know I am.”

“So you gonna talk to the guy?”

“If it’ll make you happy.”

“Good enough. I got a good feeling.”

“About the guy?”

“Oh, no. You’re totally gonna blow that,” he laughs. “This is just to get your feet wet after a year of wandering in the desert.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m talking about the bird. My fortune. My tarot draws have not been clear lately.”

He does not know what the fuck a tarot is, but he lets Rin believe whatever he wants. Life is easier that way. Besides, the aviary is within sight and this entire stupid matter will soon be put to rest once Rin has his stupid fortune. There’s already a crowd, to Sousuke’s annoyance. Yet to his benefit, he’s taller than all of them. All of them except one: the keeper setting up a familiar mobile perch.

Sousuke squints, perplexed. He doesn’t have the best memory for stranger faces, but he certainly remembers the guy didn’t have a bonfire on top of his head. This person is orange. When he speaks, he’s loud and earth-shatteringly cocksure. His grin is not fake and forced; rather it’s an easy, crooked crescent. In short, it’s not Mr. Tachibana.

“Oh,” Sousuke says. If there’s disappointment in his voice, Rin doesn’t pick up on it, because Rin is strolling over to the crowd. There’s at least thirty people, now that Sousuke stops to estimate. If he was barely interested in the bird before, he wants nothing to do with it now.

He sighs. This is about to be a full hour of his life he’s not going to get back. “It’s not even him.”

“Yeah, but, y’know,” Rin dismisses without elaboration. “This guy’s fine.”

“What? No. That’s not the guy we saw. He’s loud and jocky. Tachibana wasn’t like— he was nice. You said so.”

Rin turns, confusion on the tilt of his head. “...So what? This isn’t a soulmate search, Sousuke. It’s just a… I dunno. It’s for fun. Lighten up.”

Sousuke frowns. He may be boring, but he’s also reminded Rin can be a flake in a way that irks him. Everything’s a damn game to him, even Sousuke’s comfort today, apparently. “I don’t want to talk to him. I didn’t agree to that.”

“Jeez, fine. Then go get us drinks or something,” Rin says, and turns his back. “It’s not a big deal. We’ll find another victim for your dull flirting somewhere else.”

Sousuke and Rin sport tough skins for each other. A lot of bark with minimal bite. But this time, his pride is acutely, inexplicably wounded. Not all that opposed to the suggestion in any case, Sousuke drags the park map out once more. He sees a cut through the Wallaby Walkabout is the best path to the nearest concession stand, and thus he deliberately takes the longest way to get to it.

* * *

 

This is Insect World. A lot like the Wallaby Walkabout, were the exercise to compare two entirely different things with nothing in common at all.

He’s sure Rin’s all but forgotten he left by now, likely halfway through convincing the new parrot handler to join his next backpacking trip through Polynesia. Sousuke can take his time to nurse his wounded pride in peace. He has a dark hall of creepy crawlies all to himself, all sufficiently disgusting enough to distract him from dwelling for too long on any one of his more challenging character flaws.

He’s never been able to throw himself into open water like Rin can. Can’t shoot first and ask questions later. Can’t make a greater meaning out of a nonstop collection of disjointed experiences. All that. He needs plans and bigger pictures to build him out of his funks. Not speed dating interviews at the local zoo. For all the ways Rin is good at coaxing Sousuke out of his comfort zone, he can be equally adept at inadvertently shaming him right back into it.

A tank enclosing a swarm of roaches the size of small rodents play the collective wingman and stop his meandering thoughts in their tracks. They’re absolutely repulsive. Most of them perch on top of some light flesh-toned food. Sousuke bends, hands to the tops of his thighs, to get a better look, hoping their food source is not, in fact, flesh. He’s relieved to see a stripe of tell-tale ruby red; it’s a piece of apple. They eat fruit. It’s a relief… after he allows himself to be briefly disappointed.

He squints through the habitat. There are at least twenty-five of the nasty things, bunched in groups around pieces of fresh fruit set on damp soil, surrounded by vines and foliage. Warm condensation collects at the corners of the plexiglass, indicative of the humidity level within. The little fuckers climb too, dense plague-carrying bodies weighing down—

Sousuke jumps a foot into the air when he unexpectedly catches the until-now camouflaged, foliage-matching green eyes of a person on the other side, a person who jolts and blinks back in equally measured surprise. Sousuke’s processing catches up and he decides he’s caught the eyes of a volunteer on the other side of the wall who’s been stuck with feeding the roaches.

He stands stiff and shuffles towards the exhibit exit to leave the worker be and avoid a chipper customer-service conversation about bugs he has no interest in having, but the door to the right of the wall of habitats opens anyway.

“Oh, hi! Excuse me!”

Sousuke stops, sighs, considers walking out anyway, and ultimately decides to be nice to a teenager instead and let him down politely. He turns, eyes trained down as he is accustomed to having to do for shorter people, and catches an eye-full of shiny green polo instead.

“Can I answer any questions? I’m sorry I scared you.”

“You didn’t—” Sousuke adjusts his eye level for the rare person who is surprisingly as tall as he is, and his protest simultaneously dies in his throat. “Woah. It’s you.”

Mr. Tachibana is holding his smile admirably, but it is a forced placeholder for the confusion fighting for prominence off his knitted brow. “Excuse me?”

“Tachibana.”

He points to his name tag. “That’s me. Did you… have a question?”

“You’re the bird man.”

The customer service veneer slides off. There he is. The average, earthly, handsome handler from TV. Sousuke likes him like this, when he’s human. The inherent high definition of three dimensions helps make out those fuzzier details, like angles and lashes and a honeyed, rich complexion. “That’s not a… I’m sorry, have we met?”

“No, not at all. Yamazaki.” He extends his hand, and Tachibana makes no show of pretending he wants to take it, but does so anyway for the bare minimum amount of time before breaking it. “But Sousuke’s fine. I caught your segment with Buttercup.”

A defensive smile creeps back up Tachibana’s face. “Oh, I see! I’m terribly sorry about that, I was standing in for Buttercup’s usual handler, and he isn’t very well behaved with people he doesn’t know well, and—” He sighs, drops his head, and wrings his hands before looking at Sousuke again. “I can get my supervisor, if you’re here to complain.”

Sousuke snorts, which serves to place the other at ease. “No, I thought it was hilarious. Well, my friend did, I just thought you looked... I just felt bad.”

“Well, thank you,” Tachibana says. “I think? Is… that why you’re here?”

“The bird said you’d die; so I’m following up,” Sousuke jests.

“I’m… very much alive.”

“Hey, it’s only Saturday.”

It is only by the criminally loud crunch of Sousuke clearing his throat puncturing the ensuing thick silence that Sousuke realizes he’s botching this as spectacularly as Rin predicted he would. Maybe worse. Minutes ago, he wouldn’t have cared if he had failed to leave an impression so long as he had made an attempt for Rin’s sake, but this time he’s gone and accidentally threatened a stranger’s life. A stranger who is handsome and one who has, somehow, not yet told Sousuke in no uncertain terms to go fuck himself like his last few encounters in the wild have ended.

But Tachibana just laughs. It’s slow at first, unsure, a little in the _what the fuck did I just hear_ range, but it rises and builds out exponentially until it could fill a hearth with warmth and crackle.

Sousuke waits until it racks out of his system, content to experience it. It being: a genuine, non-snarky, mirth-laden laugh. In his life, so devoid of that as it’s been, it strikes him deep as a thing he didn’t know had faded from his daily existence until it came back with such force.

“I truly have no idea why you’re here, Sousuke, but you’re funny.” He shifts out of his uneasy stiffness and rests his weight over one leg in a relaxed slouch. “I’m Makoto, now that I know you’re not with the ALF.”

“Makoto,” Sousuke repeats, a verbal medal for a dusty, neglected shelf. “ALF?”

The double doors to the exhibit burst forward under the collective surge of seven gradeschool-aged children flood the hall. Their chaperones stumble in after them and corral them in front of the termites for a head count. One adult looks to Makoto in silent plea for entertainment.

Makoto offers Sousuke an apologetic smile. “I have to traumatize the children now.”

He doesn’t say anything quaint like, say, it was nice to meet you, Sousuke, or pleasure speaking with you, Sousuke, which might indicate that it was fun, but no thanks. Given the tacit green light, Sousuke chooses a very Rin-forward push. He can’t entirely hide from the fact that this went better than it should’ve and he’s not a man about to look a gift parrot in the mouth.

“Think you could traumatize me sometime?”

Makoto doesn’t laugh this time. He stares. Sousuke can feel it boring into the side of his skull, as he has already broken eye contact to look for the nearest wall to slam his head into in repentance for such an awful pick up line.

“Y’know, to... learn,” he mutters.

“Oh! Yes. Learn. Do you like insects?”

“I just… love them,” he pushes through his teeth. “We could uh, talk about them anywhere, really.”

“Oh, well if I survive the weekend, Monday mornings are great here.”

His nerves flatline, just a little. “Oh, here? You mean right here? At the… zoo?”

“It’s only retirees,” Makoto smiles. “And they only come to feed the ducks. Half-priced admission. Whatever questions you got.”

If he assumes Sousuke works standard hours, he clearly doesn’t care. Sousuke’s either on thin ice or he never even pushed off the snow bank and Makoto is just humoring him.

He’ll take it.

“All right. Uh, sure. Should I… text ahead?”

A child screams impatiently, pulling Makoto’s attention away for good. “I’ll be here,” he says quickly as he hustles past, “just pop in!”

Not even a number. Just pop in, Sousuke!

Yet, he vows to himself, if Rin asks, it’s a date.

* * *

 

A convenient interlude, in front of a mobile popcorn truck.

Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time”, muffled, from a speaker within the truck, transforming a ballad of devotion into a predatory, obsessive experience.

Here leans a hypoglycemic entomologist. Before him, framed by the service counter, an infamous but anonymous op-ed writer for the culture section of the _Tottori New Times_ who keeps a part-time food service gig to bridge the time inbetween columns, the position courtesy a favor of a friend who knows a gal who knows a guy.

“Drizzle?”

“Chocolate.”

“Topping?”

“Peanuts.”

The chocolate is a given, already prepared. The topping is the only wild card in the entomologist’s order. Once assembled, he intercepts the red-checkered paper boat piled high with a mountain of decorated dessert popcorn before it slides off the metal counter and into the dirt.

“Hey... are you still seeing—”

“No. Why?”

“No reason, really.”

The salt, the sugar, the crunch. A rush of endorphins to untangle the last of the jitters and jolts fraying his nerves apart after an hour of placing delicate leaf insects atop seven sets of open, sticky palms. Today, there were no tiny grotesque casualties, only three children burst into tears, and his thoughts often circled back to the curious and comely man making strange faces into the Madagascar hissing cockroach habitat assuming he was alone.

“It’s just, someone came by,” is all he deigns to add. Well, that, and: “He was funny. A little odd. I think he was into me?”

“Is that a question?”

“Yes, it was.”

“Then he probably is.”

“I lost track of him, though. I had to work, and looked on the way over here, but he must’ve left already.”

This deliberately dodgy lack of detail was only cute when they were younger, sadly, and now only serves to make everyone’s life harder, and no one here will argue the ensuing sarcasm is undeserved. “If I see anyone who looks into you, I’ll let him know you were asking for him, but didn’t put up too much of a fight for it.”

“That’s not necessary, I told him he could come back to see me on Monday morning when it’s less busy so we could talk more.”

A damning, blank stare. “...Date. The extracurricular action you’re looking for is a ‘date’ and they don’t take place inside Insect World on Monday mornings.”

“I know how to date! Of course that’s a date. What else would it be?”

“No one but you would think that’s a date. You know how to hook up, not date. I keep telling you this.”

“I’m not that helpless. He agreed, I’ll have you know, and I know it’s lame but I’ve been trying to put myself out there, and— fine. What would you have done?”

A full-bellied sigh. “Did you think to invite him to the fundraiser?”

“...Oh.”

* * *

 

A serendipitous encounter, in front of a mobile popcorn truck.

(that is not all that serendipitous, but who will have the heart to say it, should it work)

Toto’s “Africa”, muffled, from a speaker within the truck, transforming a ballad of melodrama into a haunting, existential experience.

Between Sousuke and Rin, the rarest conversation of all: silence. It stagnates between the idiosyncratic breaks in muted kernel crunching. Rin has chosen a forlorn and unfocused stare into the mid-distance to get Sousuke to pay attention to him this afternoon. Sousuke prefers this to Rin’s usual tactic (the heaving sigh, coupled with a side glance to check if Sousuke is looking yet). Sousuke can take his time to respond this way.

Contrary to any one person’s highly specific, knee-jerk assumption, it is Sousuke who eats piece by piece, akin to a voracious chicken peck. Rin is the barbarian who funnels fistfulls of snacks into an open maw. It is Sousuke, then, who pecks after what Rin drops. In biology, they call that a commensal relationship. Rin calls it lazy and unsanitary.

Rin washes down the last of his bag with the last of his soda. Sousuke’s not watching him do this, he only infers it by the way Rin makes a point of an elongated inhale on the straw in an effort to produce the most annoying, sustained straw-gurgle he can possible make in this moment.

“Rin,” Sousuke breaks. The call for attention immediately ceases, a neglected ego abated and soothed. “You aren’t seriously bent out of shape over this, right?”

Rin glares at him. “What do you care? You don’t believe in this.”

Sousuke pushes his half-finished bag away. He lifts his drink to shake it side to side, breaking up the settled ice, and sips. “You are not going to drown in Peru.”

“You don’t know that!”

“Buttercup is a prick— a fear monger,” Sousuke declares. “He wishes death on everyone.”

Rin sits up taller, a realization pulling him taut. “I have to cancel the trip. I can’t just, like, take my chances, Sousuke. What if I did drown? You’d feel so stupid.”

“Oh, yeah. Of course. Me— _I_ , Sousuke, and not Rin, would feel stupid.”

“Give me that you sarcastic piece of shit,” Rin snaps, and swipes the rest of Sousuke’s popcorn for another round of stress eating. He chews and gnashes through his next inquiry: “Just where the hell were you, anyway?”

It’s a watershed moment that Rin realizes both Sousuke was gone and even remembered to ask him about it. “That Tachibana?”

“No shit?”

“He’s the bug man, not the bird man.”

“No shit!”

“I think he was into me?”

“That is the truly unbelievable outcome of this trip.”

Toto’s gentle, distant lyrics ( _i seek to cure what’s deep inside)_ burst forth into sharp, bombastic clarity from the open, rear double-doors of the food truck _(FRIGHTENED OF THIS THING THAT I’VE BECOME!)_. The discordance instinctively jerks their attention towards the culprit for a moment to confirm it is only the truck operator stepping out for a break.

“Tell me more,” Rin continues, turning back with narrowed eyes. “In my court of law, you shoulder the burden of proof to convince me he’s both real and not crazy.”

Sousuke shrugs. “He just seemed nice. Good sense of humor. Works with the bugs. That’s all I got. Does there need to be more?”

“You hate bugs, so there has to be. Handsome?” Rin digs deeper. “He really seemed your type.”

“C’mon, Rin.”

“So yes. When are you seeing him again?”

“Uh, Monday, I guess. I think? We got interrupted.”

Rin clicks his tongue. “Ever heard of passion? That’s not good enough. The spark will be stale by then. Past its expiration. Where’s your initiative? You gotta make him feel wanted! Desired!”

Sousuke frowns. “I want to get to know him, not hunt him.”

“You never chase! It’s always a leisurely stroll! There’s a balance, Sousuke, these things don’t just happen, you gotta help make them happen!”

The food truck operator stretches his arms over his head before he drops them to swing at his sides. His deliberately aloof swagger is distracting, even moreso when he chooses to pick that moment to walk towards them for their trash, presumably.

“Yeah, but, chasing, that’s not me, Rin, that’s—”

The food truck operator does not take their trash. No, he slides onto a seat at the picnic table. Their picnic table. Next to Rin, far enough away that Rin won’t immediately deck him for being in his personal space, but close enough that he knows full well he is intruding with every intention of carrying it through.

Sousuke hadn’t thought much of the operator when he paid for the snacks (interesting, trivial thing about Rin, the cultured world traveler: he’s broke). In fact, the guy ignored Sousuke and made no eye contact at all, which happens to be Sousuke’s preferred method of customer service, so this development is annoying.

“Can’t help but overhear. You met Buttercup?” he asks by way of greeting. “He always tells me I’ll die in my sleep.”

“Who trained this bird?!” Rin wonders.

“Can we help you?” Sousuke asks, more appropriately pointed.

He levels Sousuke with disdain. “No, you can’t.” He turns to Rin. “I’m in charge of… promotions.”

Rin blinks. “For the food truck?”

“For the zoo. There’s a fundraiser tonight at the amphitheater, starts at seven. We’re celebrating the first night of Zoo Lights. Everything will be lit up to bring in the holidays.”

“Whoop-de... doo?” Rin says. “All right. Thanks.”

“Hey,” Sousuke grouses. “Who the hell are you?”

The man ignores him. “It’s for charity. There will be events and educational demonstrations. A penguin march, a travelling dancing dog troupe—”

“I’m talking to you!”

“— an interactive exhibit featuring an eclectic mix of insects from around the world,” he finishes quickly.

Initiative.

Sousuke knows what he’ll find in Rin’s expression before he meets it: inquiry, realization, and the bright and promising horizon of a great idea.

“...Fine,” Sousuke relents.

Rin grins as he eases back to slouch over an elbow on the tabletop, his interest fully turned on their divine intervention. “You said seven?”

“Hors d’oeuvres at a quarter till.”

“Formal?”

“Oh, definitely,” he answers, to Sousuke this time, and Sousuke swears on his life this suddenly preternatural creature of the dark somehow knows exactly who he is. “A real black tie event.”

But that would be absurd.

* * *

 

It is not a black tie event.

“I’ll kill him,” Rin says. “I don’t know where he is, who he is, or why he did this, but I’ll kill him.”

They are two solid black monoliths parting a sea of Tommy Bahama tops, beige cargo shorts, and Teva sandals. The hors d’oeuvres were picked through by 6:30, actually, and the central table sports a paltry display of loosely crumbled store-bought cookies, mini cranberry-orange scones, and tiny mystery sausages skewered with toothpicks. All leftovers rest beneath an invisible yet thorough coating of the cumulative coughing of, well, everyone.

“On the bright side,” Sousuke responds, “we still wear it well after all these years.”

Rin rolls his eyes and racks his shoulders back and down from his ears, cockiness restored. “Of course we do.”

Sousuke scans the crowd for what may be the thirtieth time. It is primarily zoo employees cliqued together by area, some plus-ones and their families, but not a whiff of the only zoo employee he’s here for. “Not seeing him.”

“Interactive exhibit, right?” Rin recalls. “He wouldn’t be mingling.”

Around them, the chatter bottoms out as a mic screech rings sharply. At the center of the amphitheater, the Very Orange Man from that afternoon steps up to a microphone.

“The penguins are on strike,” he says, earning a crowd-wide laugh. It’s not that damn funny. “We’re going to have to go with the alternate entertainment here in a few minutes. So parents, you’ll have to cover your kids’ ears, because—”

“Oh no,” Sousuke groans.

“—it’s Buttercup!”

“Gettin’ real sick of this shit,” Rin grumbles.

“He wants to shake you all down for donations. But first! The sun’s finally dropped. So we’re gonna light up the park.” He stops to grin, and winds an index finger through the air as a green-light gesture to an unseen force. “Whenever you’re ready, guys! Light it up!”

After a twenty second delay, the perimeter of the amphitheater bursts into dazzling white. The park beyond— down the rails, up the trees, wound around the paths and poles— is an instantaneous, awe-striking galaxy of thousands upon thousands of tiny strand lights of all colors and spacing and densities. It’s beautiful, enough so that even Rin is finally, though only temporarily, rendered speechless.

“Don’t you two think you’re a bit overdressed?”

Sousuke and Rin spin on their heels to pin their enemy down. There he is, drinking from a punctured coconut with a straw, under-decked in a plain white shirt beneath a deep blue Hawaiian un-buttoned down. There is an unslakable bloodlust for mischief dancing within those equally deep blue eyes that both infuriates Sousuke and commands his respect.

“You think you’re fuckin’ hilarious, don’t you?” Rin snaps.

“It’s a living,” he answers.

“Haru!”

All three heads turn to the source, and at the same time Sousuke wonders if Makoto owns any outfit other than the damnable green polos and tan khakis but accepts he still wears the ensemble well just the same.

“There you are, I— Sousuke? Haru?” He blinks towards Rin. “And who are you?”

“Rin.”

“Nice to meet you, I think?”

Rin laughs. “Oh, it really is. You have no idea.”

“Right…” Makoto searches the newly revealed Haru for an answer and is met with a shrug. “Sousuke, why are you here? And why on Earth are you dressed in a suit?”

“Haru,” Sousuke responds.

“Me,” Haru agrees. “On both counts.”

“I— What?” Makoto shakes his head. “Nevermind. Okay, I would love to figure out what is going on,” he continues with a degree of urgency, “but I came to find you because Haku got loose again!”

“Again?” Haru sighs. “Makoto.”

Makoto furrows his brow and huffs. “It wasn’t me. He was dropped! And then he was gone, just like that. It’s too dark for this. I tried to warn the director and he didn’t listen and now Haku’s gone.”

Sousuke sees his chance to go for something. To shoot first and ask questions later. The distress in Makoto’s voice is even genuine enough to move Rin at his side to action, despite only just meeting, and Rin’s general lack of concern for the affairs of local peasants. “Let us help.”

“Really? Would you? Oh, thank you so much Sousuke, he couldn’t have gotten far, I’m only worried after the entertainment wraps up, everyone will go walk the zoo to see the lights, and foot traffic is dangerous for him.” He points back down the way he came. “This way!”

As Makoto retreads his steps, he takes the flurry of the moment with him, leaving Sousuke with the question he only now realizes would’ve been pertinent to ask a moment ago given Makoto’s profession, as shooting first is hereby overrated.

“...What is Haku?”

It’s odd how this Haru person maintains such a placid, unaffected face when Sousuke is sure he hears the smile as he speaks: “A tarantula.”

* * *

 

It’s a showdown at the O.K. Corral Petting Zoo.

To the left, a congregation of billy goats shrouded under nightfall, distinguished by chattering bleats.

To the right, a silent herd of dainty deer, save the solitary rebel gnawing on the wooden fence.

An ornery swan of Sousuke’s own hubris blocks the exit at his back.

Three feet from the squared toe of Sousuke dusty dress shoe: Haku.

It’s fate, maybe, if one omits the contributing factors which made it all but inevitable that Sousuke would be the one to find the spider. Rin declared himself “whole ass over it” within four minutes, and returned to the amphitheater for Buttercup’s comedy skit. Haru, Sousuke is relatively certain, never left the amphitheater to begin with. Makoto swore up and down he combed the petting zoo over no fewer than three times for his missing monster friend, given that it is the only logical place the hairy nightmare could’ve scuttled off to nearest where he was dropped, but Makoto did not find him.

That means fate, such as it is, was ordained before Sousuke ever stepped foot through the hip-high rodeo gate. Now Makoto searches elsewhere, leaving Sousuke to this moment of reckoning. Of course Haku is exactly where Makoto thought he would be yet somehow missed; such truths tend to be the case with all things lost where they’ve been left.

Now what?

Haku moves a single leg of eight. Sousuke leaps back on both his two.

If he runs at it, will it bolt? Attack? If he’s in range, does he grab it? Will he crush it? Does it bite? Is it poiso— no, that’s wrong. Is it venomous?

Sousuke’s adept at math. By his calculation, if he kills Haku, his chances with Makoto are as good as zero, down from the dismal tenth decimal they were before. He can’t fuck this up.

He steels himself to gently handle a thing that might kill him. Gentler than the only time he was forced to hold a newborn by a factor of five. He will glide over on careful steps, scoop that eight-legged concentration of evil into his two steady, yet pliant hands and he will deliver it unto a man who knows no fear, a man he would just like to get a fucking coffee with at this point, or something else that’s mind-numbingly normal, something expected, something— yes! Boring. Something boring! For fuck’s sake; can’t life be boring again?

“All right, you ugly rotten sin,” he mutters. “You get to live and I save the day. We don’t have to like each other. It’s a gentleman’s agreement here.”

He takes a step forward, and the rest happens all at once, both too fast to comprehend and in slow motion.

Haku runs at him faster than any spider as big as a rat should be able to run. Later, he will learn their top speed is a jazzy eighteen miles per hour. Betrayed by a primitive survival instinct, Sousuke turns and flees. He’s forgotten about the swan. Makoto’s returned to check on him. The swan flares its wings and interprets Sousuke’s cowardice as a charge. Sousuke’s survival instinct decides it would rather risk a mauling by a spider. He flips an about-face.

Makoto: “The swan!”

Sousuke: “I know!”

Makoto: “No, not you, he’ll kill Haku!”

Another quandary forms for the so-called mathematician. A spider running north at fifteen miles per hour is headed straight for an enraged swan running south at the speed of murder, approximately. Given Sousuke bails into the goat pen and avoids a grisly demise as the carnage in the middle, how long until the two collide?

“Grab him, Sousuke!”

Makoto’s desperation breaks through. As if it were always so simple as that, he does it. When the dust settles, and the goats stop screaming, he’s kneeling in the dirt with Haku entombed between his hands. It is unpleasant. But all that wriggling means Haku is alive.

“Get out of here!” Makoto yells behind him. Sousuke looks over his shoulder in witness of a level of bravery he will never see usurped again in this lifetime. Makoto is chasing the swan from the Corral and, perhaps just as awe-striking, the swan is in full retreat. “Get! Go away!”

And next Makoto runs to him, bled through with relief. Sousuke stands to meet him, arms outstretched in silent pleading.

“Ohhh no,” Makoto sighs elongated. “Oh no I was so worried—”

“Makoto.”

“—those swans are the worst, I am so sick of all these awful birds in my life—”

“Makoto, please—”

“—And then you just threw yourself into it and saved him and, I just, wow, Sousuke!”

“Makoto!” Sousuke pleads, insisting his clasped hands forward, “Please take this hellish spider away from me immediately I am begging you.”

“Oh, right.” From his back pocket, he procurs a small, flattened cardboard box with tiny air holes and shakes it out into form. “Here, go ahead and drop him in.”

The beast no longer nestled between his hands, and securely tucked in his transport box, allows tension to drain from Sousuke’s body. He slouches, adjusts his tie where it’s gone askance, and laughs out his nerves. “I lied before. I don’t love bugs, because I’m fucking boring. I’m ambivalent about them on a good day. Butterflies are fine, I guess. Mosquitos can fuck right off. Anyway my point is I’ll be happy to greet Haku from a distance from now on but please do not make me touch him again.”

Makoto’s lavish laugh is criminal, or should be. “Well, he must’ve liked you, since he didn’t get you with his little defensive hairs.”

“I’m touched. Does he also tell fortunes?”

Makoto rolls his eyes and smiles, a crescent bolstered by a convenient framing of sparkling string lights just behind him wrapped up the archway to the Corral. “Thank you. I’ll get him home. Then, if you don’t mind, let’s just… take our time? Talk?”

Never have more passionate words stoked such a roaring bonfire in his heart.

* * *

 

Blessed be the epilogues, for within them, nothing happens.

It smells of pungent spice and cedar, it tastes of a certain peak seasonal crisp. It sounds of Huey Lewis’s punchy synth notes percolating through tinny ceiling-recessed speakers, falling and plopping along the floor.

It feels like tiny, spiky legs and it looks like something that would destroy Los Angeles were the scale in its favor.

“Like this?”

“Mm. Just like that. Easy. Now… just…”

“Don’t let go.”

“I am letting go.”

Behold, within the cradle of his palm, a—

“...What was it again?”

“Giant prickly stick insect, subadult male nymph, technically? Extatosoma tiaratum.”

—giant prickly stick insect.

“It’s not doing anything.”

“No, he only looks scary. The tail mimics a scorpion’s, for protection. Really, they’re big softies.”

Sousuke is pleased to say the exposure therapy is going well.

To leaving his house, that is.

The bugs are an after-hours work in progress, but one he is fully committed to, because it’s something he can hold over Rin. Literally and figuratively. It also overjoys Makoto beyond measure to plop insects of increasingly gargantuan stature into his hands and prattle off everything he knows about them in the thirty-second window Sousuke can handle it before begging Makoto to take it back please stop laughing at me and take it back— and securing that happiness is a ranked goal quickly leaping rungs on the rush to the top of his priority ladder.

Today, Makoto doesn’t wait for Sousuke’s limit, and coaxes the creature back to his hand to return him to his enclosure.

“You don’t have to humor me, you know,” Makoto reminds him. The hinge to the tank snaps shut and he turns back around. “I won’t be offended.”

“Humor you?” Sousuke throws a thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of Haku’s habitat. “I still got a bone to pick with him. Gotta square up and be ready for it. This is a seriously vested interest.”

Makoto snorts. “If you say so.” He shakes his forearm out to re-center his wristwatch and hums as he reads it. “It’s nearly eight. I better get home and change so we can make it to the New Year’s party. Haru wanted me to bring onion dip... I have no idea why.”

“Need help with that?”

Coyly, Makoto smiles and steps forward. “The changing?”

Sousuke pulls him in closer by the wide pocket wings of his khakis. “The onion dip.”

“I think I might,” he answers, “because it could take a while.”

“It could,” Sousuke agrees.

“So long, we might end up just having to stay in.”

“Oh?”

“What, with Buttercup performing the countdown, and his ongoing conviction of my untimely demise...”

“It’s a matter of safety, to stay in. Where I can keep an eye on you.”

“Exactly.”

“He can’t curse you.”

“Right.”

“Or embarrass you.”

“Nope.”

“He—”

“Sousuke, do it before I do it for you.”

A veritable snooze, an utter drag, a kiss so damnably boring.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!


End file.
